Playing It Close (30 page)

By the time they started tucking in to their breakfast, the eggs had turned to Styrofoam. He didn’t care, though. She’d cooked for him, and even admitted she’d had to look up a recipe...a scrambled-eggs recipe, for fuck’s sake. “What do you usually have for breakfast?” he asked.

“Depends. On work days, I buy oatmeal at one of the sandwich shops near work. At weekends, I usually go to a cafe around the corner. But today—” she waggled her eyebrows suggestively, “—I had you.”

“Please. No puns about me filling your belly.”

She gasped and smacked his arm. “That’s worse than anything I was thinking.”

“Whoops,” he said, biting back his grin, completely unrepentant. He took a bite of his toast, last night coming back to him quickly now that his lust and his hunger were both on their way to being sated. Tess sat cross-legged in front of him, Legends shirt covering her again, hair mussed up, mouth slowly chewing on breakfast. “Tess?”

“Mmm-hmm?”

“Who named you Countess?”

She paused her chewing momentarily, then swallowed, wiping some crumbs from her lips. “Um, my birth mum.”

That was what he’d thought. “Tell me about it.”

She took another bite, her gaze firmly focused on the tray on the bed between them as if rubbery scrambled eggs were the most fascinating things in the world. They’d been here before, him and Tess—the first night he’d come to her house and asked why she’d left him in Venezuela. She’d ignored him at first, and he’d wanted to reel the truth out of her like it was a stubborn fish fighting capture. But he’d learned that night that getting Tess to open up took time and patience. She had eventually, giving him morsels of a story that he’d been piecing together ever since.

He wanted her secrets, but more than that, he wanted her trust.

* * *

Tess swallowed her bite and picked up her toast to take another, but a knot in her stomach had expanded, making the thought of food sickening. She put the toast down with a grimace. “I think she gave me that stupid name because she had high hopes I’d achieve more in my life than she did. God knows she was useless as a mother, by all accounts. I don’t remember her. My parents adopted me when I was three, and I was in care for about a year before that.”

“So you weren’t adopted at birth?”

She shook her head. “I lived with my birth mum till I was two. Then...I was taken away from her.”

Liam slipped his fingers between hers and gently squeezed. “What happened?”

She hesitated. After clearing the lump in her throat, she said, “My birth mum had had some drugs convictions, so when I was born she was put on a register with social services. I was tested at birth, and I was clean, but they still made sure to visit regularly. There were some things that concerned them. Nothing bad enough to justify removing me, until...” She chewed on her bottom lip, glancing briefly up at him through her lashes.

His nostrils flared and his eyes had gone wide, as if he was picturing all of the horrific possibilities. “Until what, love?”

“She met a man, apparently. And he wasn’t too keen on having kids around. Neighbors told social services that she’d started leaving me at home alone at night, but no one did anything until she went away with this man for the Easter bank holiday.”

His jaw unhinged. “Four days? She left you for four fucking days when you were two?”

Tess shrugged. “That was her plan, but apparently on day two I started crying. The neighbors got fed up with hearing it by day three so they called the police. They said it hadn’t occurred to them that my mother wasn’t around, or they’d have called sooner.”

“Baby.” He cupped her cheek and shoved the tray so it didn’t come between them. “You could’ve starved.”

“She wasn’t that careless. She left dry Cheerios in a dog bowl for me, right next to a bowl of water.” She was trying to be brave, but even she could hear a shudder of emotion under the steel in her voice.

“Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck.” He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her onto his lap. She held herself stiffly, not wanting to give in to his comfort. “I had no idea. I’m so sorry.”

“Not like it’s your fault. Shitty things happen, but honestly? That’s probably one of the best things that ever happened to me.”

“How?”

Her head pounded. He’d shared such a beautiful family story with her when they’d curled up together on his couch. She desperately wanted to be able to share the same with him. She dug deep to find it. “My family are amazing, Liam. They’ve stuck by me through so much. Not just the inquiry, which must’ve been so embarrassing for them, but even from the beginning. They started fostering me because they thought they couldn’t have kids. Mum found out she was pregnant with Gwen before the adoption went through. They could’ve handed me back to social services, but they didn’t.”

Her throat ached as she recalled all the visits to child psychologists...the time she was kicked out of preschool after physically lashing out at a girl for reasons not even she understood... “I wasn’t an easy child to love. I had a lot of emotional issues that must’ve been hell for them to deal with, especially when they had a newborn of their own.”

His arms tightened around her, his chin sliding over the top of her head until she was forced to curl against his chest. Back in the man cave he’d created for her, only this time instead of the gentle, relaxed rhythm of his breath drifting over her, she felt his jaw tensing over her scalp, his heart thundering against hers.

“You really don’t remember anything?”

It was what she told the few people who asked, but it wasn’t quite the truth. Remembering the relief she’d felt when she confessed her humiliations to him last night, Tess gambled on letting him see a little more of herself than she’d ever shared with anyone else. “I can’t picture what she looked like or bring to mind a specific memory. But whenever I think about her, I feel this bizarre mix of longing and loneliness, like I must’ve spent a lot of time craving attention I knew I wouldn’t get.”

The feeling still haunted her, creeping up whenever she least expected it. She’d never admitted that to anyone. Her family knew the circumstances surrounding her removal from her mother’s care, but they’d never pried into her own memories. It was as if they were scared to know the answer. Maybe they worried that part of her wished she’d never been taken away from her birth mum. She didn’t have even a shred of doubt about that. What terrified her was how it might still affect her twenty-five years later.

Reaching her capacity for gut-wrenching self-reflection, she shoved the memories down and kissed his cheek. “I have to get ready.”

“For what?”

“There’s a Legends home match today. I can’t neglect my duties to the team by lazing around in bed with their captain.”

“Fuck. I forgot.” His arms tightened around her, as though he was unwilling to let her go so soon.

She hugged him back, whispering in his ear, “What’re you doing today?”

“I’ve got the morning free and hoped we could watch Wales-Argentina together before I went to training this afternoon, but I guess not.”

She brushed her fingertips through the hair at his temples, and the piercing look he gave her filled her with lusty shivers—lust for his body, his time, his attention, none of which she’d get for the rest of the day. “If you want, you can stay here to watch the match.”

He perked up, as if thoughts of her home cinema eased some of his disappointment. “You wouldn’t mind?”

“Nope. You can let yourself out when you leave. The door locks automatically, but I have a spare set of keys so you can latch the deadbolt or get back in if you forget something.”

He cocked a brow. “We’re exchanging keys, are we?”

She eyed him silently for a minute. “I don’t need a key to your place, and you can give me mine back later if you want.”

Oddly, she didn’t want. There was something comforting about the thought of him letting himself into her home, maybe surprising her with a kiss as she cooked a gourmet meal wearing nothing but her Rosie apron. Hey, if this was a fantasy, she might as well go all out.

She pushed herself off his lap and stood, purposely giving him a quick flash of her bum in the process. “Now, would you like me to give you a tour of my shower?”

* * *

Sooner than Liam wanted, she was dressed in jeans and her new Legends shirt, kissing him goodbye and pushing her bike out the front door. He felt oddly like a househusband, as if he were sending his wife off to work before he settled in for a morning of hard-core TV-watching. The feeling wasn’t as uncomfortable as he would’ve imagined.

Her confessions last night and this morning weighed him down, making him realize that he hardly knew her even though they’d been sleeping together for weeks. He’d never pushed to discover more than a woman wanted to share. He rubbed his aching chest as he went over her story in his head.

She must’ve spent her early years terrified. While he’d known nothing but joy and love, she’d experienced abandonment from the one person who should’ve been her safe haven. No fucking wonder she never asked him for anything. If she didn’t ask, she wouldn’t face rejection. Problem was, her lack of trust hit him where he was most vulnerable. What was it about the women he most wanted to support having the least faith in him?

He pushed the unsettling thought aside and wandered into the kitchen for a glass of water. Spotting her tablet computer, he picked it up and carried it to the living room with him. He collapsed onto the couch and flipped on the TV, excitement buzzing through him when he saw the clarity of the picture and surround sound. Jesus, it was nearly as good as being on the pitch. He
definitely
wasn’t giving her keys back.

As the commentators went over the usual pre-match bollocks, he woke up the computer intending to read the latest rugby news, but the website that popped onto the screen made his breath catch.

An appointment confirmation from a hospital on Harley Street. An expensive, private hospital—the kind of place people went to for treatment that wasn’t covered on the NHS...or when they were too scared to wait.

The automated confirmation didn’t say what the appointment was for or even give the name of a doctor. It just said the system had received Tess’s request for an appointment and she would get an email on the next working day.

Liam’s stomach heaved even as he tried to convince himself not to jump to conclusions.
She’s fine.
She’s fine.

That’s what Mum said too.

Shite.

He went to the hospital’s homepage, but none of the information helped. They specialized in everything from infertility treatment to cosmetic surgery to rare genetic disorders to cancer care.

Cancer care.

He shut the tablet’s cover and lay back against the sofa, covering his throbbing eyes with his hand. She’d made the appointment this morning, while he’d still been asleep. And here he’d congratulated himself on getting her to open up about being adopted. Fucking hell, she probably wouldn’t have told him anything if he hadn’t pushed her to—and that was a pain she’d experienced decades ago. What would it take for her to trust him with her health information?

Your own
mum
didn’t trust you with the truth.

Yeah, and he’d learned that lesson. No fucking way would he sit around waiting to know what was going on, blithely assuming like a complete dick that she was telling him the truth.

She was cycling to the stadium and was probably almost halfway there. If he called a cab, he might be able to catch her up.

He arrived at the stadium in time to see her pushing her bike toward the offices instead of locking it outside, where it was more likely to get nicked. He shoved a wad of dosh at the cabbie and followed her, keeping his head down in the hope he wouldn’t be recognized by any supporters milling around outside the gates. By the time he reached the offices, she was already stepping into the lift with her bike. He sprinted for it, squeezing through the closing doors as if they were a couple of opposing defenders blocking him from the try line.

“Liam! Jesus! What’re you—are you crazy?” she yelled. “You could’ve been killed!”

A slow grin spread over his face as she unconsciously echoed the first words she’d ever said to him. But her shocked little face reminded him of exactly why he was here, why he had to speak to her so badly, and his smile disappeared. “Yes, Tess. I’m crazy. Please tell me I’m crazy. I opened your computer this morning and saw something I probably shouldn’t have.”

Her eyes widened, her face paling.
Fuck!
This wasn’t going to be good.

“I can’t believe you looked at my email!”

“Email? It wasn’t your email. It was a hospital appointment. Why? What’s in your email?”

Blood rushed back to her face, staining her cheeks a furious red.

She turned away and pressed one of the buttons. “I can’t talk to you about this. Not here, not now. I just...I don’t have time. Ruth told me I could lock my bike up in her office, and I have to be in the stadium in ten minutes.”

Pathetic.
The lift started its slow ascent toward the management offices but came to a jarring halt when Liam slammed his hand against the emergency stop button. “Now you have plenty of time.”

An alarm went off and Tess groaned, gently hitting the back of her head against the wall in a sign of frustration. “Why are you pushing this?”

“Because something’s going on with you, and you won’t tell me what it is. Because I feel—” What? How did he feel? Tess’s curious face seemed to beg the same question. “I feel like I want to help you, but you’re shutting me out.”

“Because I don’t need help, Liam. There’s nothing wrong with me.”

“Then tell me why you’re going to that clinic.”

“It’s—it’s a woman thing.”

“For fuck’s sake!” He slapped his hand against the lift wall. “Don’t fob me off with that patronizing bullshit. That’s how my mum explained her ovarian cancer to me, and she fucking
died
without even giving me a chance to say goodbye!”

He didn’t realize what he’d said until he took in her shocked face. She laid a hand on his arm. “Liam...”